Cutting short-shoot mutants from the Red Delicious and McIntosh groups

Cutting short-shoot mutants from the Red Delicious and McIntosh groups

In our orchards, short-shoot apple trees from the Red Delicious variety are grown (Starkrimson) i Mclntosh (Macspur). They are naturally small trees, slow growing. Their limbs are stiff, slightly branched, covered with profuse shoots. They come to fruiting early and bear fruit abundantly. Trees in this group do not require hard pruning. They fit well in the orchard, both with a 6X4 m spacing and with higher density. Red Delicious mutants create slender and quite tall crowns. Already during the formation of trees, shoots should be bent, to give the crowns a wide shape. If the shoots were not bent in time, then you have to correct the shape of the crowns later, in the period of full fruiting. It is necessary to remove the vertex to the height 3,0 m and trimming the upper limbs above the branch facing the outside of the crown. On several-year-old trees, the branches can be made more horizontal by spacers inserted between the guide and the branches. Struts approx 80 cm, we make of slats, hammering in at the ends 3 cm nails without heads.

Short shoot mutants derived from the McIntosh variety do not cause much trouble in the orchard. The cut is limited to moderate overexposure.

Pruning apple trees of weakly growing Wealthy varieties, Melba i James Grieve.

The common feature of these varieties is very poor tree growth and a tendency to very abundant fruiting. The shape of the crowns, these varieties differ quite significantly from one another. The tree canopy of the Wealthy variety is small, loose, with stiff limbs. The canopy of Melba trees is small, loose with flabby branches, while trees of the James Grieve variety have small crowns, but dense. All three varieties withstand high orchard densities and can be cut heavily if necessary without adverse effects. If trees are planted 6X4, so for many years there is no need to limit the span of the crowns. Wealthy trees may need top pruning, so that they do not grow over 3 m in height. In the case of too abundant fruiting and trees are prone to yielding crops, the crowns must be intensively X-rayed every other year, removing large amounts of small twigs and shoots.. Strong pruning reduces the alternation of fruiting and improves the quality of the fruit.